Guangzhou building biopharma hub

Employees work at a biopharmaceutical production facility in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. （CHEN JIMIN/CHINA NEWS SERVICE）

Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, is sparing no effort to build a global hub for innovation and development of its biopharmaceutical industry, a city official said.

This is expected to inject strong momentum into the sector in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and across the country.

The development of the biopharmaceutical industry will bring more hope and benefit a vast number of patients, said Meng Hao, deputy secretary general of the Guangzhou municipal government.

To this end, the city government will establish a 150 billion yuan ($21.5 billion) industrial investment fund to promote cooperation between major financial investment companies and local investment institutions, with a focus on investing in the biomedicine sector, Meng said.

Meng made the remarks at a news conference on promoting Guangzhou's biopharmaceutical industry on Monday.

Guangzhou has a population of nearly 24 million. It is the most populous city in the GBA, which includes nine Guangdong cities as well as Hong Kong and Macao.

The southern metropolis has about 6,800 registered medical and health institutions, including 47 major hospitals and eight national and regional medical centers.

"In the first half of this year, more than 93 million patient visits had been recorded in the city's medical institutions, and the abundant medical resources provide broad space for the transformation of achievements and market application of biopharmaceutical enterprises," she said.

Guangzhou's biopharmaceutical industry is in the top tier in the country, and the city has more than 6,500 biopharmaceutical and related enterprises, including 12 Fortune Global 500 companies, 23 listed companies and over 1,000 high-tech enterprises. These have formed biopharmaceutical industrial clusters that are playing an increasingly important role in the development of Guangzhou's pillar industry, said Meng.

The city will accord priority to the development of four major industries — biopharmaceutical, medicine, traditional Chinese medicine and high-end medical apparatus and instruments. It will also try to construct a number of key State laboratories, industrial innovation centers, manufacturing innovation centers and national engineering technology centers in the next five years, said Meng.

Guangzhou will accelerate the construction of industrial parks and zones for biopharmaceutical and related industries in the following months, she added.

Zhang Yi, deputy director and spokeswoman of the Guangzhou health commission, said the commission unveiled a series of measures in September to promote the high-quality development of innovative medical devices and support their clinical application.

"The new measures aim to promote and accelerate innovation in the biopharmaceutical industry and help develop new quality productive forces," she said.

"Meanwhile, the commission encourages research and development personnel from pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to connect with clinical experts in medical institutions to further improve the mechanism of medical engineering integration, collaborative innovation and information exchange through establishing clinical research beds in medical institutions and conducting medicine clinical trials," she said.

The commission will further promote the application of innovative medicines and medical devices in hospital admissions, said Zhang.

Zhao Huie, a representative from Guangzhou Medprin Regenerative Medical Technologies Co Ltd, said the new measures will help enterprises accelerate clinical applications and enhance production.

"All companies hope that their medical products can be clinically applied as soon as possible," she said.

Guangdong province is planning to boost annual revenue from its biopharmaceutical and health sector to more than 1 trillion yuan by 2027, from 663.8 billion yuan in 2023, according to an action plan issued by the provincial government earlier this month.

The action plan aims to promote high-quality development of the biopharmaceutical sector in Guangdong.

According to the action plan, Guangdong is planning to lift the total annual revenue of biopharmaceutical enterprises above a designated size — which has grown by 10 percent on average since 2018 — to 500 billion yuan by 2027.